1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a job ticket issuing apparatus, an image forming apparatus and an image forming system, and more particularly to a job ticket issuing apparatus, an image forming apparatus and an image forming system allowing facilitated print setting free from errors.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an image forming apparatus forming an image on paper using toner, such as MFP (Multi Function Peripherals) or a printer, has been known. In such an image forming apparatus, a manner of printing such as the number of copies to be printed and a paper size should be set. The image forming apparatus executes printing based on a setting of the printing manner.
Among the conventional arts of the image forming apparatus, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 11-316658 discloses a technique in which an image forming apparatus provides a manner of print setting to a user PC using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and accepts the setting, so as to print out print data received with HTTP. The print setting is held in the image forming apparatus.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-142657 discloses an image forming apparatus including a web server which holds print data and accepts a print setting command and a print execution command of the held print data.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-236568 discloses a printing system in which a printing device has a mail address for each printing instruction and the printing instruction is determined by a mail address to which a print job is sent.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-76524 discloses a system including a management server managing a plurality of devices on the network, in which a printer driver of a client PC outputting a print command acquires information on an output destination device list and available print setting thereof from the management server so that a user interface of the printer driver reflects such information.
With the technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 11-316658, however, a protocol used for reception of the print data by the image forming apparatus is limited to HTTP. Accordingly, when the print data is transmitted from the client PC, HTTP should be used for upload without exception. In addition, since a value for the print setting is held in the image forming apparatus, the print job should be transmitted simultaneously with the setting.
With the technique described in Japanese Laid-Open-Patent Publication No. 2001-142657, as the print data is held in the server, a storage area for that data is required.
In addition, with the technique described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-236568, print instruction contents are determined by the mail address. Accordingly, it is disadvantageous in that a plurality of mail addresses should be prepared for one output device.
With the technique described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-76524, the management server managing the plurality of devices is required.
Moreover, in a general conventional art, in order to complete detailed print setting in the image forming apparatus, a dedicated printer driver adapted to a type of the image forming apparatus should be installed in each client PC, which results in complicated procedure.